Modesto Children’s Museum marks a milestone, begins new effort to ‘Launch the Adventure’
Robots and reptiles shared 11th Street on Saturday as the Modesto Children’s Museum celebrated the next step toward its anticipated opening next summer.
The Launch the Adventure event, held on 11th between I and J streets outside the museum building, was held to mark MCM reaching its private fundraising goal and launch its public fundraising effort.
The festival gave a taste of the types of hands-on, interactive STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) exhibits the museum will have. Children drew, played with plastic building bricks, saw the Beyer High Iron Patriots robotics team do its thing, petted Python Ron’s huge Argentine tegu lizard and other reptiles, tried their skill at giant Jenga, chess and checkers, and more.
About $7.5 million has been raised so far for the museum, including donations of $500,000 or more from the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation, the Piccinini Pesco Family Foundation, Sutter Health and an anonymous benefactor. The city of Modesto and Stanislaus County also each contributed $500,000. Of the county money, half is for the capital campaign and half is earmarked to run programming once the museum is open, said Dr. Jake Barber, a member of the museum board.
Gifts of $250,000 or more were made by at least a dozen donors, including the Porges, Boyett, Endsley and Olson family foundations. A full list of “founding supporters” is at www.modestochildrensmuseum.org/supporters.
The money raised so far “gets us to starting construction here in just about a month on this building, which is really exciting,” Barber said Saturday, standing outside the museum’s home. The two-story, roughly 11,500-square-foot space at 930 11th St. opened as Heart & Soul — a coffeehouse operated by The House Modesto church — in October 2017 but closed in fall of 2020.
Now, the museum begins its public donation drive. About $9 million total will get it up and running by early next summer, “so we need about $1.5 million to get this launched all the way,” Barber said.
“Today is really about launching to the public, saying that we need every donation, whether it’s $5, $25, $100, $5,000, whatever it is, we need everyone’s support to get behind it.”
Barber’s wife, Katie, is president of the museum board. She said the museum will be fully staffed, including “people with educational backgrounds as facilitators with the exhibits.” Design boards on display at Saturday’s event showed the museum will include water, air and light labs, an art studio/maker space, and areas called Valley Proud, Tall Tales, Adventure, and Little Rainbows.
The underlying themes are color, vibrancy and energy, Jake Barber said. Focus groups including parents, educators and business and community leaders said they want the museum space to be “something that’s bright, beautiful, warms your heart and gets you excited,” he said.
Boiling it down to two words, Barber said the museum will be colorful and creative. “It’s all about the children ... creating their own memories and their own adventures when they come here.”
The Barbers shared some big news to kick off the public capital campaign. The Olson Family Fund is offering a dollar-for-dollar challenge grant through September, up to $125,000. “For me, it’s great knowing your money to going to get doubled,” Jake Barber said.
To donate to the Modesto Children’s Museum, visit www.modestochildrensmuseum.org/ways-to-give.
To learn more about the museum, go to its website, its Facebook page, or email info@modestochildrensmuseum.org.
This story was originally published August 15, 2022 at 6:40 AM.
